Online vendors craft opportunity out of crisis

Platform providers have become prominent players in the post-crisis debate

By

Simon Boughey

September 26, 2011 Updated: September 25, 2011 8:50 p.m. GMT

The financial crisis, which paralysed the global economy and the effects of which haunt us even now, has proved an inestimable boon to at least one portion of the financial industry: providers of online trading platforms. If events had been directed and stage-managed by a cabal of these vendors themselves, things could not have turned out better.

In June 1914, a Hungarian diplomat is reputed to have described the tragic assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie as a "gift from Mars". Online...